By excluding jobs held by black and brown workers from basic worker protections, the Fair Labor Standards Act, adopted decade ago during the New Deal, injected institutional racism into a federal wage and hour law.
Veteran labor organizer Fernando Gapasin is interviewed by Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Bill Gallegos. "I dedicated myself to ending racism and building worker power by building democratic working-class organizations from the bottom up."
Throughout his adult life, Martin Luther King Jr believed in striking down not only racial apartheid but class exploitation. That twin commitment was embodied in his final effort: the often-forgotten Poor People’s Campaign.
The question is whether even a supportive president can reverse the decline in union power that economists say has helped hollow out America's middle class. Neither organized labor nor sympathetic politicians have managed to do that for decades.
President Biden's statement on Tuesday urging the U.S. House of Representatives to approve the Protecting the Right to Organize Act follows his earlier support for workers who want to organize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama.
Up until the 1500s, brewing was primarily women’s work – that is, until a smear campaign accused women brewers of being witches.
In South Africa, private security companies have eclipsed the police force, threatening the state’s democratic authority and replicating apartheid-era racial inequality. Is the U.S. next?
Political, legal, and demographic changes, along with census delays, will shape the fight for fair maps and representation.
USPS is a vital source of decent jobs for Black workers. It could also narrow the racial wealth divide by expanding financial services.
The CBO finds that the raise would boost the incomes of 17 million Americans, and most probably 27 million Americans—that is, close to a fifth of the entire American workforce.
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